...1935; filmed as Xiangnu Xiaoxiao in 1986), Shen examines rural values and practicality. Of Shen’s longer works of fiction, Biancheng (1934; The Border Town; filmed 1984) is generally considered his best; in it he combines his doubts about modern civilization with an idealized view of the beauty of rural life. Collections of his......

McCarthy achieved popular fame with All the Pretty Horses (1992; film 2000), winner of the National Book Award. The first volume of The Border Trilogy, it is the coming-of-age story of John Grady Cole, a Texan who travels to Mexico. The second installment, The Crossing (1994), set before and during World War II, follows the picaresque adventures of brothers Billy and Boyd......

...throughout the tissue. Both tracheids and vessel elements are long hollow cells with tapered end walls. The end walls of adjacent tracheids contain paired small, rimmed, nonperforated pores, called bordered pits; water diffuses through a shared central membrane. The side walls have five patterns of thickening, which are believed to represent a developmental sequence from the initial xylem......

In addition to the two primary types of continental margins, there also are special types that do not readily fit either category. One of the most intensely studied margins of the world is the Borderland, the continental margin of southern California and northern Baja California. It consists of a series of offshore basins and ridges, some of which are exposed as islands. This system of basins......

...remarkable affinity in both fauna and rock type and are usually considered to have been united in Devonian times. The relationships with the underlying Silurian System are seen in the classic Welsh borderlands, where the Ludlow Bone Bed was taken as the boundary until international agreement placed it somewhat higher. In Wales, southern Ireland, and the Scottish Lowlands, thicknesses of......

...despite the initial cost. No new methods of lighting, however, were devised for stage lighting. The conventions remained the same: footlights (a row of lights across the front of the stage floor), borderlights (a long horizontal row of lights used for the general lighting of the stage from above), and striplights (a row of lights usually mounted in a trough reflector and placed in the wings to....

...Ivory Swing (1982), concerns a troubled Canadian family living in India. In Tiger in the Tiger Pit (1983) a reunion provides a setting for family members to examine their wounds. Borderline (1985) is a suspenseful novel that begins with a refugee’s attempt to cross the U.S.–Canadian border in a meat truck and evolves into a mystery on several levels while also......

mental illness characterized by chronic instability in the affected individual’s mood, relationships, and sense of identity. The term borderline was first brought into psychiatric terminology in 1938 by American psychoanalyst Adolph Stern. Stern used it to describe patients who were “on the border” of psychosis and neurosis, individuals who displayed particular symptoms u...

“Borderline violence” consists of behaviours that violate the official rules of the sport but that are accepted by players and fans alike as a legitimate part of the game. Such behaviour—a fistfight in ice hockey or an intentional foul in association football’s penalty zone—is rarely subject to legal proceedings and tends to be dealt with by penalties imposed by......

council area, southeastern Scotland, its location along the English border roughly coinciding with the drainage basin of the River Tweed. Its rounded hills and undulating plateaus—including the Lammermuir Hills, the Moorfoot Hills, the Tweedsmuir Hills, and the Cheviot Hills—form a section of the Southern Uplands that is dissected by the valleys of the Tweed a...

Beginning in 1994, the Colorado Silver Bullets, sponsored by a brewing company and managed by Hall of Fame pitcher Phil Niekro, competed against men’s teams for four years. Between 1997 and 2000 Ila Borders, a left-handed pitcher, played for two men’s teams in the independent Northern League. While women have participated in professional baseball for more than a century, their impact on the......

...young maidens. Pixies also delight in rapping on walls, blowing out candles, and playing in water. Pixies were first discussed at some length by British novelist Mrs. Anna Eliza Bray in The Borders of the Tamar and the Tavy, 3 vol. (1837)....

...(Louis Calhern) of his sister (Mary Astor). After Desirable (1934), an entertaining soap opera with George Brent and Jean Muir, Mayo made the near-classic Bordertown (1935), a drama starring Paul Muni as a Mexican lawyer who tries (but fails) to fend off the advances of his rich boss’s wife (Bette Davis in an over-the-top but memorable......

Belgian physician, bacteriologist, and immunologist who received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1919 for his discovery of factors in blood serum that destroy bacteria; this work was vital to the diagnosis and treatment of many dangerous contagious diseases....

Belgian physician, bacteriologist, and immunologist who received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1919 for his discovery of factors in blood serum that destroy bacteria; this work was vital to the diagnosis and treatment of many dangerous contagious diseases....

town, Liguria regione, northwestern Italy. It lies along the Riviera di Ponente coast between Ventimiglia and San Remo. The Institute of Ligurian Studies, formerly the Bicknell Museum, displays a unique collection of the flora of the Riviera. A leading winter resort, Bordighera exports flowers, olive oil, and palm branches for religious ceremonies during Holy Week at St. ...

...(1661), a Danish version of the 16th-century French poet Guillaume du Bartas’s La Semaine. The century was rich in occasional poetry; didactic and pastoral poems were also common. Anders Bording, an exponent of Danish Baroque poetry, was also the founder of the first Danish newspaper, Den danske Mercurius (from 1666), in which the news appeared in......

Canadian painter. He was trained in Montreal as a church decorator and later studied in Paris. In the early 1940s, influenced by Surrealism, he began to produce “automatic” paintings and with Jean-Paul Riopelle founded the radical abstract group known as Les Automatistes (c. 1946–51). His later works are reminiscent of those of Jackson Pollock, but the ...

The border, or bordure, is in Scotland used as a mark of difference, and in English heraldry since the mid-18th century a bordure compony (alternating sections of two tinctures) has been used to signify illegitimacy. The orle is an inner border, not touching the sides of the shield; the field is seen within and around the orle, giving it the appearance of a shield......

The bore shapes of musical instruments, which have developed over the centuries, have rather interesting effects. Cylindrical and conical bores can produce resonances that are harmonics of the fundamental frequencies, but bores that flare faster than a cone create nonharmonic overtones and thus produce raucous tones rather than good musical sounds. A fact discovered by early musical instrument......

in weaponry, the interior of the barrel of a gun or firearm. In guns that have rifled barrels, e.g., rifles, pistols, machine guns, and artillery or naval guns, the diameter of the bore is termed the calibre. (The term “calibre” also designates the outside diameter of the projectile or ammunition used in the gun.) In these weapons, the calibre is normally obtained by meas...

body of water that, during exceptionally high sea tides, rushes up some rivers and estuaries near a coast where there is a large tidal range and the incoming tide is confined to a narrow channel. Traveling upstream about two or three times as fast as the normal tidal current, a bore usually is characterized by a well-defined front of one or several wa...

The combustion chamber is defined by the size, location, and position of the piston within the cylinder. Bore is the inner diameter of the cylinder. The volume at bottom dead centre (VBDC) is defined as the volume occupied between the cylinder head and the piston face when the piston is farthest from the cylinder head. The volume at top dead centre (VTDC) is the volume occupied when the piston......

...southward retreat of trees at the onset of the ice ages, and there were relatively few indigenous species to return northward from unglaciated refuges. In the first postglacial climatic phase (the Boreal), spruce, fir, pine, birch, and hazel nevertheless established themselves as far north as central Sweden and Finland. During the succeeding climatic optimum (the Atlantic phase), which was......

biome (major life zone) of vegetation composed primarily of cone-bearing needle-leaved or scale-leaved evergreen trees, found in northern circumpolar forested regions characterized by long winters and moderate to high annual precipitation. The taiga, “land of the little sticks” in Russian, takes its name from the collectiv...

(Ptilium, formerly Hypnum, crista-castrensis), the only species of the genus Ptilium, it is a widely distributed plant of the subclass Bryidae that forms dense light green mats on rocks, rotten wood, or peaty soil, especially in mountain forests of the Northern Hemisphere. The erect stem of a feather moss has a featherlike, or frondlike, appearance. The leaves, with their curv...

The Boreal, or Holarctic, kingdom (Figure 1) consists of Eurasia and North America, which essentially have been a contiguous mass since the Eocene Epoch (55.8 million to 33.9 million years ago). The narrow Bering Strait, between Siberia and Alaska, has existed only since the end of the Pleistocene (some 11,700 years ago). It is no surprise that the......

...southward retreat of trees at the onset of the ice ages, and there were relatively few indigenous species to return northward from unglaciated refuges. In the first postglacial climatic phase (the Boreal), spruce, fir, pine, birch, and hazel nevertheless established themselves as far north as central Sweden and Finland. During the succeeding climatic optimum (the Atlantic phase), which was......

A further eustatic rise (of about 10–12 metres) ensued about 7750 bp, corresponding to a warming of the climate marked by the growth of oak forests in western Europe (the BAT, or “Boreal–Atlantic Transition”). In The Netherlands the barrier beaches re-formed close to the present coastline, and widespread tidal flats developed to the interior. These are known as the......

in Greek mythology, the personification of the north wind. He carried off the beautiful Oreithyia, a daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens; they lived in Thrace as king and queen of the winds and had two sons, Calais and Zetes, and two daughters, Cleopatra and Chione. To show friendliness toward the Athenians, Herodotus wrote, Boreas wrecked the fleet of the Persian king Xerxes off the beach Sep...

The two psychological hazards commonly encountered at work are boredom and mental stress. Workers who perform simple, repetitious tasks for prolonged periods are subject to boredom, as are people who work in bland, colourless environments. Boredom can cause frustration, unhappiness, inattentiveness, and other detriments to mental well-being. More practically, boredom decreases worker output and......

The most productive method is horizontal drilling followed by fracking. In this combined technique, a borehole is drilled straight down through thousands of metres of rock to the shale. This portion of the well is lined with one and sometimes two cemented steel pipes called casing. At a predetermined “kickoff point,” the borehole is turned to the horizontal; from there drilling can......

...be measured by determining the current flow between an electrode in the logging tool and another electrode in the ground at the surface. The later log measures the electrical conductivity of a bed. Borehole cameras are sometimes used as part of the logging process....

...stage. One is an “overcoring” method (developed in Sweden and South Africa) used for ranges up to about 100 feet out from the drift and employing a cylindrical instrument known as a borehole deformeter. A small hole is drilled into the rock and the deformeter inserted. Diameter changes of the borehole are measured and recorded by the deformeter as the geostress is relieved by......

French mathematician who created the first effective theory of the measure of sets of points and who shares credit with René-Louis Baire and Henri Lebesgue of France for launching the modern theory of functions of a real variable....

French mathematician who created the first effective theory of the measure of sets of points and who shares credit with René-Louis Baire and Henri Lebesgue of France for launching the modern theory of functions of a real variable....

Jan. 10, 1949Bronx, N.Y.April 22, 2002Denver, Colo.American actress who , starred in the classic feature-length pornographic movie Deep Throat (1972), which ended up being shown in mainstream theatres and earned some $600 million. She later revealed that her husband at the t...

Napoleon called the English a “nation of shopkeepers,” and in England art may owe much to trade. Children’s literature in England got its start from merchants such as Thomas Boreman, of whom little is known, and especially John Newbery, of whom a great deal more is known. Research has established that at least as early as 1730 Boreman began publishing for children (largely......

...critical to the U.S. national interest. Assistance is also offered to colleges and other institutions of higher education offering such programs. NSEP was created and developed by Oklahoma Sen. David Boren and authorized by the David L. Boren National Security Act of 1991....

Two groups of bivalves have exploited other food sources. These are the shipworms (family Teredinidae) and giant clams (family Tridacnidae). Shipworms are wood borers and are both protected and nourished by the wood they inhabit. They possess ctenidia and are capable of filtering food from the sea. When elongating the burrow, they digest the wood as well. In the Tridacnidae, symbiotic......

any of a number of species of insects that are included in the family Anobiidae (order Coleoptera). These beetles tend to be small (1 to 9 mm, or less than 0.5 inch) and cylindrical. When disturbed, they usually pull in their legs and play dead....

Swedish athlete, one of the dominant swimmers of the 1920s. Between 1921 and 1929 Borg set 32 world records in swimming. He was the winner of two silver medals and a bronze medal at the 1924 Olympics in Paris and a gold and a bronze medal at the 1928 Games in Amsterdam....

Swedish tennis player who was one of the finest competitors of the modern era. He was the first man to win the Wimbledon singles championship five successive times (1976–80) since Laurie Doherty (1902–06). He won the French Open men’s singles championship an unprecedented four times in a row and six times in all (1974–75, 1978–81)....

Swedish tennis player who was one of the finest competitors of the modern era. He was the first man to win the Wimbledon singles championship five successive times (1976–80) since Laurie Doherty (1902–06). He won the French Open men’s singles championship an unprecedented four times in a row and six times in all (1974–75, 1978–81)....

Maltese politician who led the Maltese Nationalist Party from 1950 to 1976 and twice served as the island’s prime minister (December 1950 to March 1955 and March 1962 to June 1971), including the period during which Malta gained independence from Britain in 1964....

city, southern Finland, at the mouth of the Porvoo River on the Gulf of Finland, northeast of Helsinki. About one-third of the population is Swedish speaking. One of Finland’s oldest communities, it has been a trade centre since the early 14th century and received town rights in 1346. It has been the seat of a bishopric since 1723. In 1809 the Finnish Diet, in...

The political framework of Finland under Russia was laid down by the Porvoo (Borgå) Diet in 1809. Finland was still formally a part of Sweden until the peace treaty of Hamina (Fredrikshamn) later that year, but most of the Finnish leaders had already grown tired of Swedish control and wanted to acquire as much self-government as possible under Russian protection. In Porvoo, Finland as a......

Faxa Bay includes two eastern arms: Hval Fjord (Hvalfjördhur) and Borgar Fjord (Borgarfjördhur). Hval Fjord provides shelter for ships and was used as an anchorage for Allied naval convoys during World War II. It is now a fishing and whaling base....

Faxa Bay includes two eastern arms: Hval Fjord (Hvalfjördhur) and Borgar Fjord (Borgarfjördhur). Hval Fjord provides shelter for ships and was used as an anchorage for Allied naval convoys during World War II. It is now a fishing and whaling base....

...and the 1880s were marked by a so-called “building fever.” Shantytowns occupied by poorer Romans soon sprang up in the rural-urban fringe known as the borgate romane. The exodus of lower-class Romans to the periphery was further encouraged by Mussolini, whose creation of grand boulevards in the city centre destroyed entire......

Aug. 13, 1930Matagalpa, Nic.April 30, 2012Managua, Nic.Nicaraguan revolutionary and politician who was a founder (1961) and leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, the rebel group that overthrew (1979) Pres. Anastasio Somoza Debayle and ther...

Danish-born American pianist and comedian who was known worldwide for his irrepressible humour, which combined deadpan delivery, clever wordplay, satire, irreverence, and physical comedy as well as music....

city, Hutchinson county, northwestern Texas, U.S., in the Texas Panhandle, near Sanford Dam, 45 miles (72 km) northeast of Amarillo. Part of the Borger-Phillips-Bunavista tri-city industrial complex in an area producing oil and gas, Borger was founded in 1926 and incorporated the same year with the completion of the first oil well. Overnight it became a boomto...

During the Courtyard Crisis in February 1914, Gustav declared his support for demands that Sweden strengthen its defenses. He was accused of overstepping his authority, but, with wide popular support for his actions, he was able to force the resignation of the Liberal government that had decreased military expenditure. He appointed a Conservative government under the leadership of Hjalmar......

a noble Italian family, originally from Siena, who first gained fame in the 13th century as magistrates, ambassadors, and other public officials. They moved to Rome in the 16th century and there, following the election (1605) of Camillo as Pope Paul V, rose in wealth and fame....

state museum in Rome distinguished for its collection of Italian Baroque painting and ancient sculpture. It is located in the Borghese Gardens on the Pincian Hill and is housed in the Villa Borghese, a building designed by the Dutch architect Jan van Santen (Giovanni Vasanzio) and built between 1613 and 1616....

...he enjoyed from the several ecclesiastic offices that he held, Scipione financed the restoration and construction of many churches and palaces in the city of Rome. His major project was to have the Villa Borghese built in Rome, where he assembled an important collection of paintings and sculptures....

...Having been prepared for this field by the young Kiel professor Otto Jahn, he soon became a master of epigraphy—the study and interpretation of inscriptions—under the guidance of Bartolomeo Borghesi, the learned statesman of San Marino. Within the next several decades Mommsen made the corpus of Latin inscriptions into a source work that was essential in complementing the......

town, Dalarna län (county), central Sweden, on the Dal River. In the Middle Ages a stronghold known as Borghnäs was located near the present site; its destruction in 1434 opened a war of liberation against the Danes. With the coming of railroads, beginning in 1875, Borlänge developed into an important commercial centre for the surrounding agricultural and industrial areas.......

natural son of Pope Alexander VI. He was a Renaissance captain who, as holder of the offices of duke of the Romagna and captain general of the armies of the church, enhanced the political power of his father’s papacy and tried to establish his own principality in central Italy. His policies led ...

descendants of a noble line, originally from Valencia, Spain, that established roots in Italy and became prominent in ecclesiastical and political affairs in the 1400s and 1500s. The house of the Borgias produced two popes and many other political and church leaders. Some members of the family became known for their treachery....

...Giulia la Bella and the future pope Paul III). In the course of his pontificate Alexander appointed 47 cardinals to further his complicated dynastic, ecclesiastical, and political policies. His son Juan was made duke of Gandía (Spain) and was married to Maria Enriquez, the cousin of King Ferdinand IV of Castile; Jofré was married to Sancia, the granddaughter of the king of Naples;......

Although he was born in Italy and spent most of his life there, Cesare’s family and cultural background was almost entirely Spanish. His elder half brother, Pedro Luis, was duke of Gandía, and all of his early benefices were in Spain. At the age of seven Cesare was made an apostolic prothonotary and canon of the cathedral of Valencia....

In addition to his film credits, Jordan also created the television series The Borgias (2011–13) and wrote and directed several of its episodes. Jordan’s fiction writing included the short-story collection Night in Tunisia (1976) and the novels The Past (1980), Sunrise with Sea Monster......

American actor whose portly physique and coarse features made him a commanding presence in scores of films and television productions, in which he skillfully portrayed characters ranging from brutish thugs to hapless everymen....

American actor whose portly physique and coarse features made him a commanding presence in scores of films and television productions, in which he skillfully portrayed characters ranging from brutish thugs to hapless everymen....

town, Republic of San Marino, located northeast of the city of San Marino, the republic’s capital, on the slopes of Monte Titano, at an elevation of 1,706 ft (520 m) above sea level. It is considered a suburb of the city of San Marino and has most of the capital’s shops and offices. Borgo Maggiore is the principal market town of the republic, and is also the seat of the Italian consulate. Historic...

inland region of western Africa, covering parts of what is now Benin and Nigeria and bounded northeast and east by the Niger River. Its name probably derives from the aquatic grass called borgu, a cattle food. The peoples of the region formerly gave allegiance to the sultan of Borgu and the chief of Busa...